This extraordinary history of the French far right, from its modern origins in the 1890s to its ebb and flow throughout the twentieth century, could not come at a timelier junction in European politics, when the hard right once again threatens to topple the pillars of democracy that have governed France since the end of World War II.

Post-Revolutionary France attracted political and artistic exiles who made the City of Light a beacon of international culture. But darker currents also emerged from the Revolution in the form of right-wing or counterrevolutionary forces. These groups often embraced anti-Semitic or anti-Socialist themes in order to attract a wide following, resulting in episodes that form the core of The Dark Side of France―be it the 1914 assassination of socialist leader Jean Jaurès or the repeated attacks in 1936 on Jewish Popular Front leader and then–Prime Minister Léon Blum. Popular support for the far right would reach its high point in the late 1930s with the Parti social français of Colonel François de La Rocque, before France succumbed to the Nazi invasion and rule by the collaborationist Vichy regime of Philippe Pétain.

Despite the ignominious collapse of Vichy, the far right remained unvanquished, as demonstrated by OAS terrorist resistance to Algerian independence and the many assassination attempts on Charles de Gaulle. The political inheritors of wartime collaboration and the OAS are alive and well in today's far-right movements―Islamophobic portrayals of "parasitical" Muslims in addition to endemic anti-Semitism―as France now faces a critical period that will shape its future. As O'Doherty writes in this necessary work, "The struggle against prejudice and victimization of the marginalized continues today."